


love, i'm in love again

by atlantisairlock



Category: This Way Up (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, F/F, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Missing Scene, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26547655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/atlantisairlock
Summary: Five secrets Shona tells Charlotte + one that Charlotte tells Shona.
Relationships: Charlotte/Shona (This Way Up)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	love, i'm in love again

**Author's Note:**

> @ aisling bea season two WHEN 
> 
> i'm in love with sharon horgan + indira varma. that's it 
> 
> title from 'everything goes my way' by metronomy (mostly because it was on sharon horgan's desert island discs playlist. what can i say? it's a hyperfixation).

They start doing lunch together a lot after Shona pitches Charlotte her networking idea. There’s just so much else there is to do, and cramming some of the brainstorming into lunch hour means a more efficient use of their time. At first they do lunch at Charlotte’s cubicle - neither of them have offices proper and Charlotte’s got just a bit more desk space - which is great, because they’ve got Charlotte’s computer right in front of them whenever they need, until Shona accidentally knocks chicken noodle soup over her keyboard one afternoon when she’s reaching for a pencil and Xin from IT doesn’t look well pleased with them when she comes to replace it. They try taking lunch meetings to the cafe down the road, but it’s frequented by lots of high school students, and about the third time Charlotte has to ask her to repeat something she’s said, Shona decides, _fuck it._

“There’s this little office on the top floor that nobody ever uses,” she tells Charlotte. “I think it used to have all the fax and printing machines back before the internet came along and changed the world and now it’s tucked away in this little corner and nobody really goes there for anything. But it’s comfortable and quiet.” She’s gone there a couple of times when she’s needed to be left alone to rush something in the face of some insurmountable deadline. Shona likes to think of it as hers.

Charlotte has a grin on her face, her eyebrows raised. “You’ve got the key to this little office?”

“I _might_ just be fairly adept at lockpicking,” says Shona, grinning back. “Hidden depths and all that, eh?”

“I’m not actually that surprised that you can pick locks,” Charlotte teases. “What other secrets are you hiding?”

“I’m actually in MI6, and all this is just undercover work. Vish and Aine are my handlers,” Shona says as they exit the elevator, heading down the corridor to the office. Charlotte tips her head back and laughs, bright and genuine. It’s infectious. Shona finds herself smiling as she leads them into the little room with their lunch and their notebooks. “Well, then, I’d better not tell you about my plans to assassinate the Queen.”

Shona snorts in amusement. “No, keep going, I’m listening.”

“Good try, spy. You won’t get me _that_ easily.”

“I’d better tell my superiors to increase security around Buckingham Palace anyway,” Shona quips, just to hear Charlotte laugh again. It’s a nice laugh. She can’t help but like hearing it.

Charlotte’s in the middle of telling her about what sounds like the shittiest, most misogynistic boss alive when Aine calls. She sighs inwardly when she sees Aine’s name pop up on her phone - she loves her sister, but sometimes it’s just… a lot, to always be expected to be on the other side of the line when she’s needed. Vish’s mentioned it before, not very positively, and Shona doesn’t really want to pull the same thing on Charlotte.

But Charlotte tells her to _just take it,_ and she’s smiling when she says it, and Aine’s her sister, Aine’s her priority, so Shona does. Even though it’s just Aine complaining about David. Shona’s not surprised, but she still firmly tells Aine not to ditch and come home. She needs to get out of the house more than once a week, and going to work doesn’t count.

Charlotte’s nice about it, when she hangs up and gets back to the living room, even if she does bring Freddie up, which of course makes Shona grit her teeth a little. Bloody prick. But Charlotte’s good about it. Listens, doesn’t judge, doesn’t say anything stupid and insensitive. She mentions her own issues with her mental health, and - shit, Shona’s just tired, you know? She loves Aine, she loves her mum, she loves Vish and her work and most of her life, whatever, but there’s just been so much to deal with the past year and nobody to talk to it about. Even Vish could get a little idiotic about it at times, obviously not _getting_ it, and when Shona looks at Charlotte, she sees someone who looks like she could get it.

And she does, when Shona talks about what happened to Aine - in the vaguest of terms, of course, she’s not about to go spilling Aine’s entire life story to someone who barely knows her. But it’s more than she’s told most people, even her mum. Charlotte listens and looks back quietly, holding her glass of wine, and just steps closer and squeezes her arm, a gesture of reassurance and understanding. It helps.

Her hand’s warm, her grip gentle but firm. They get back to work and slip back into discussing the network, but five minutes in Shona finds her fingers unconsciously lingering where Charlotte’s hand was, chasing the warmth. It makes her feel strange. She lets go of her arm and focuses on what Charlotte’s saying, letting the feeling slip away in her mind.

“Yeah - I got it, yes, okay. No, we’ll both meet you at the train station. Yes, me and Aine.” The doorbell rings and Shona sighs, scrambling off her bed to go get the door. Her mum’s still talking and Shona’s only hearing about half of it as she unlocks the door. Charlotte stands on the step, smiling bemusedly at her. She mouths _bad time?_ and Shona shakes her head, almost cursing when the movement nearly dislodges the cell from where she’s got it wedged between her cheek and her shoulder. “Alright, yeah. Mum, I’ve got a colleague over, we’ve got a meeting, I’ve got to go. Yes, I’ll see you next week. Yes, I’ll get Hari the gift from all of us. Yeah, okay. I’ve got to go. I love you too. Bye.”

“Your mum?” Charlotte asks once she’s hung up. Shona laughs a little self-consciously, moving over to the coffee table to clear some space for their notebooks. “Yeah, sorry, our phone conversations always go on longer than I expect them to. She’s coming down next week for Vish’s dad’s birthday.”

“That’s nice,” says Charlotte neutrally. “How about your dad, is he coming too?”

Shona feels the familiar ache in her chest that always comes up when she thinks about her dad, even after all these years. She clears her throat, keeping her voice level. “He passed. A few years ago.”

Charlotte’s hands still where she was laying out her papers. “Oh, god. Shona, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Shona says, although it isn’t. Not because of Charlotte, just because she doesn’t think it’s ever really going to feel ‘fine’. “It was - we knew it was coming. It was just a matter of time.” She doesn’t say why, although she braces herself for Charlotte to ask. She knows what she’ll assume, like everyone else did - illness, age. Not the bottle, not the pills; the same pills Aine reached out for when she decided she was done with the world, too.

But Charlotte stays quiet, settling down on the couch beside her. “What was he like? If you want to share about him, of course,” she adds quickly. “Only if you’re comfortable; it’s fine, if you’re not.”

“No, no - yeah, it’s fine,” she says. Not a lot of people ask her that any more. Shona twists her fingers together, looking down at her feet. “He was a great dad. He was a stablehand when he was younger, and he loved horses. He took me out riding a lot, when I was a kid. Signed me up for riding classes even when my mum complained about the expense. He’d take me and Aine on these long drives in the countryside. He’d pack these amazing sandwiches and lemonade he and my mum would make together and we’d have proper picnics and everything, in the fields. He used to send me cartons of that lemonade when I was off at college even though the postage was bloody daylight robbery.” She takes a deep breath - her vision’s blurring a little, and she blinks hard; she doesn’t want to cry in front of Charlotte. “Uh - I look like him. More than Aine; Aine always took after our mum more. The eyes, yeah.”

Charlotte silently hands her a tissue; Shona wipes her eyes as discreetly as she can and gently bumps her shoulder in thanks. Charlotte just smiles at her, slight but genuine. “He sounds like a wonderful man.”

“He was an alcoholic,” Shona says quietly. She’s not sure why; she can count on one hand the number of people outside of her family to whom she’s ever told the truth about her dad’s death. But Charlotte… Charlotte’s good about this stuff. Shona feels safe, telling her things. She never tries to give advice that Shona doesn’t want to hear, never oversteps her boundaries. She just makes Shona feel heard. Shona trusts her, and when Charlotte doesn’t react to the statement beyond resting a hand on Shona’s knee and nodding in quiet acceptance, no judgment, no shock, she knows she was right to trust her with this. “He always drank, even when Aine and I were kids, but it just got worse and worse over the years, and by the time Aine and I were adults and realised exactly what was going on it was basically too late. We tried to - I tried to convince him to go to rehab, to stop, but he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, and he just kept drinking, and eventually his body just… shut down.”

Charlotte doesn’t reply. She doesn’t need to. Shona sighs and rests her head on her shoulder, lets Charlotte put an arm around her, and they just sit like that for a while. She can feel the weight on her chest easing, bit by bit.

“Thank you,” she says softly, eventually, when she doesn’t feel like crying at all any more.

“You’re welcome,” Charlotte replies. She doesn’t take her arm away, and Shona doesn’t tell her to.

She meets Charlotte to discuss some things about the network and their introductory speech to potential investors and partners the evening after Hari’s birthday party. She’s pretty sure she doesn’t act any different than usual, but then Charlotte’s always been smart and perceptive, so she’s not really that surprised when they pause for a smoke break and Charlotte hesitantly asks if she’s fine. “You seem a little preoccupied today.”

Shona takes a drag of her cigarette, pushing her hair back and keeping herself from sighing in frustration. “Sorry. I’ll stay focused.”

“No, it’s fine. Hey. I’m just worried about you.” Charlotte rests a hand over Shona’s own, and the look on her face is earnest concern. Shona feels her heart cracking open, some sort of desperate relief at the thought of talking to someone who might actually understand where she’s coming from and won’t condescend to her about it. “I was at the birthday party today, you know, for Vish’s dad. His mum and my mum were just making some comments about having kids and all that, and I just got a little testy about it, and - yeah. Wasn’t all peaches and cream, you know?”

Charlotte hums in assent. “You’re not a kid person, then?”

“No, I’ve never - not my thing. The thought of being a mother just doesn’t hold any appeal to me.” Shona looks over at Charlotte, still calmly smoking her cigarette. “How about you?”

“I’m open to it, but it’s not a must. If it happens, it happens.” She shrugs, and Shona notices a tightness to her smile, a note of distance in her voice. “So you’ve never wanted a child, ever?”

“Never,” Shona says. Her throat feels a little tight too. She rests both hands on her knees, biting her lip and looking over at Charlotte properly. It feels like there are things she’s not saying, and Shona wants to hear them. She wants Charlotte to know she can trust Shona with her words, just like Shona trusts her. Shona keeps her tone casual but serious. “I almost - well, not really. I had an abortion when I was nineteen. I mean, it’s not that I don’t want kids because I had that abortion, I had it because even then I knew I didn’t want to be a parent. It was an accident, you know? Birth control fucking up and shit, and my then-boyfriend was a bit of a crapsack. Relationship wasn’t working out, so yeah, I sure didn’t want to raise a bloody kid with him.”

Charlotte nods. She flicks the ash off her cigarette with a bit more force, and she doesn’t look at Shona. “Yeah. I had one of those, too.”

“An abortion?”

“No. Crapsack boyfriend.” The words are a little stiff, halting, but Charlotte keeps going, so Shona listens. “My first and only, actually. Right after my first girlfriend, who dumped me for the lacrosse captain, and I thought maybe I could just… try boys. Be the good straight girl my parents wanted me to be.”

“Didn’t work out,” Shona says softly, and Charlotte laughs, mirthless, a little bitter. “Yeah. Uh, he hit me. A lot. I was seventeen, and I was pretty small and scrawny, and he was… older than me, and he was strong, he was a good fighter. Manipulative, too. Always cried after and begged me to forgive him, promised it’d never happen again. I was pretty stupid, I was twenty and he’d broken my arm once before I realised it was always going to happen again.”

Shona has to stay quiet for a bit, because she can feel the rage welling inside her, threatening to spill out the second she opens her mouth. She thinks about some faceless brutish boy, laying his hands on a younger Charlotte, hurting her, and she hates him, she truly, genuinely hates him, wants Charlotte to tell her his name, where he is now, so she can figure out a way to make him pay -

“Shona?” Charlotte’s voice snaps her back to reality, and she realises Charlotte’s got her hand on her wrist, giving her a concerned look. “Sorry. Was that too much? I know it was a little personal, you didn’t need to hear all of that.”

“What? No, Jesus. I - I’m glad. I mean, not glad that you had an abusive arsehole for a boyfriend, fuck him, I hope he’s got a shitty life right now. But - thank you for telling me. For trusting me.”

Charlotte visibly relaxes, shooting her a quick smile. “I trust you,” she agrees. She takes a final inhale from her cigarette and stubs it out. “Ready to get back to work?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” Shona says. She disposes of her own cigarette, enjoying the warmth of it. Or maybe that’s just from hearing Charlotte tell her that she trusts her. Maybe both.

The penultimate night before the pitch arrives and Shona is one hundred percent not ready for the next day to dawn. It’s nearing midnight and she’s slouched over Charlotte’s dining table crossing out yet another line in her speech and despairing as to what to replace it with. Charlotte pushes a glass of gin over to her and Shona definitely drains it a lot faster than she ought to.

“It’ll be fine,” Charlotte says with a confidence Shona absolutely does not feel. “We’ve got this, Shona. You have definitely got this.”

“Tell that to my speech,” Shona mumbles. It’s more red pen than text at the moment, which she’s pretty sure is not a good sign. She tries to focus up and review the third paragraph again, but it seems to take her four tries to process the first line. She hears Charlotte sigh and slip her papers out from under her hand. Shona makes a half-hearted grab at them, but Charlotte has had significantly less alcohol than she has and also probably more sleep, so she has them set to the side and far out of Shona’s reach before Shona can protest. “Your speech is fine. Stop worrying about it. You need to get some sleep if you want to be in fighting shape tomorrow.”

She’s right, as usual. Shona puts her head down on the table, cheek pressed against the varnished wood. Her head feels fuzzy and her mouth seems to work independently of her brain. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Char.”

“That’s the alcohol and the late hour talking, I think. For the last time, your speech is _fine,_ Shona.”

“Not just the fucking speech,” Shona says, louder than she intends to. “Just… everything. Sometimes I just don’t know what I’m doing with _anything,_ with Aine and Vish and my mum and my job and just _everything,_ I don’t know if I’m making the right decisions, you know?”

It’s quiet for a second, then Charlotte pulls up a chair beside Shona, leaning into her side. “Yeah. I feel that way a lot too.”

Shona snorts, making an expansive gesture with one hand before flopping it back down onto the table. “You? Please. What decisions are you worrying about? You’re bloody perfect.”

Charlotte laughs. Shona can feel it, the low rumble in her chest. “I’m not perfect, Shona.”

“You’re pretty perfect,” Shona grumbles. “With your whole… ‘I’m so understanding and smart and driven and organised and always know the right thing to say’ deal. And the flawless skin too.”

Comfortable silence settles through the room. Shona yawns; she’s pretty knackered, and the alcohol is _really_ hitting. It’s nice and cozy, somehow, sprawled over Charlotte’s dining table, both of them side by side, just breathing. She could stay here - well, not forever. She needs to eat and probably sleep in a proper bed. But for a while.

“You’re drunk,” she finally hears Charlotte say, soft, but distant. “I’m going to call you a cab, all right? I hope you’ve got an alarm set for tomorrow.” Charlotte stands, heading to the counter to grab her phone, and the moment is broken. The warmth and weight of Charlotte pressed to her side slides away, nothing more than a ghost on her skin.

How Shona gets through the speech without stumbling or falling apart she’ll never know, especially when she barely hears what she’s reading out or how the audience responds. All she can focus on while she’s behind the rostrum is the empty space beside Aine, her mind playing the events of the evening on loop. Vish and his impromptu proposal, the way his face fell when she stammered and basically freaked out and finally just said no. How he’d stormed out and hadn’t come back.

Aine’s on the phone when she gets off the stage, and Shona tries not to think about who she’s calling. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to handle the thought of her talking to Vish right now. She tries to pay attention to Charlotte giving her speech, but it just proves impossible to focus. She’s just… reeling.

She barely realises Charlotte’s done and has called for dinner to begin proper until Charlotte’s actually at her side pulling her to her feet. “Smoke break,” she declares, leading them both out of the hall, and Shona doesn’t have much option but to follow. She’s not very surprised when they exit the building and Charlotte doesn’t pull out her pack, though, choosing instead to fold her arms and frown at Shona. “What’s going on? You were so out of it. What’s wrong, Shona?”

Shona gives a very deliberate shrug, swallowing hard. She distantly realises she’s not feeling heartbroken or emotionally devastated, she’s just… confused and tired and lost. It’s strange, considering she probably just irrevocably destroyed her relationship with her boyfriend. Maybe it’s the shock. “Vish proposed just now. Before the event. I said no.”

Charlotte inhales, sharp. Shona chuckles. “Yeah, I know. God. I just… couldn’t. I’m not ready, I’m just not. I’m not ready to marry him.” She works her jaw, quietly letting some things settle, letting some things shift into place and just… finally make sense. “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to marry him.”

Charlotte’s gaze is searching but not probing; she bites her lip as they look at each other. “Why not?”

“Really good question. I don’t fucking know, either.” Shona suddenly feels… really fucking tired. God, what is she doing? What has she been doing? With the network, with Aine, their whole fucking fight in her apartment just now - with Vish. Does she even love him? Has she even - she hasn’t loved him in so long, not really; it feels like an epiphany, or at least she thinks it should, but it’s just another puzzle piece clicking dully into place. She doesn’t want to marry him, she doesn’t ever want to marry him, she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life with him, she doesn’t love him, and she still doesn’t fucking know why. “God, Charlotte, I really don’t know what I’m fucking doing.”

For a long minute, they just stand there. Charlotte fiddles with her lighter, starting to say something and then stopping. Shona waits patiently until she finally finds her words. “Can I tell you a secret?”

She looks hesitant, and Shona pushes her hair back, grinning a little, trying to keep it light. “I mean, I’ve told you a lot of mine recently, so… yeah. I think you can tell me one of yours.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing either,” she says. Her voice is low and wavers with uncertainty. She steps in a little closer and Shona feels something in the air shifting. Maybe, just maybe, more things falling into place. “I really don’t. I think… right now, there’s only one thing I’m really sure about.”

“Yeah? And what’s that?”

Charlotte gives her this tiny smile, this look in her eyes, and Shona realises she knows the answer, finds herself leaning in to meet Charlotte halfway even before Charlotte closes the distance to kiss her. They fit together perfectly, Shona thinks. Somehow, she’s not surprised by that either. Charlotte’s cheek is damp when Shona reaches up to cup it in one hand. She smiles questioningly when she pulls away. “Are you crying?”

“Yes,” Charlotte laughs wetly, always honest, always with Shona. “I just never thought - I never dreamed you would kiss me back.”

All the breath leaves Shona’s lungs at one go. Her heart feels like it’s expanding beyond her chest, looking at Charlotte in front of her. Charlotte looks so awed, like she can’t believe how lucky she got, as if Shona isn’t the lucky one here. Maybe she’s crying too. She works the words past the lump in her throat. “You’re the only thing that makes sense in my whole fucking world right now.”

Charlotte grins, and it’s a little shaky but blindingly beautiful. “I think I’ve been missing you for a really long time.”

“Well,” Shona says, putting an arm around Charlotte’s waist, pulling her close, reveling in her sigh of pleasure as she rests her cheek against Shona’s shoulder. It feels right, more than anything in her life ever has. She wants that rightness forever. “Here I am.”

Charlotte brushes another kiss to her cheek; Shona tilts her head so their lips meet again. It's perfect. Charlotte takes her hand and twines their fingers, squeezes tight and doesn't let go. "Here you are." 


End file.
